U.S.-Iran Talks: Much To-Do
About Nothing

Fox News, May 29, 2007

Alireza
Jafarzadeh

On Monday, May 28, 2007, the
United States and Iran engaged in a rare face-to-face
discussion regarding the security of Iraq. Both sides
described the event — the first official meeting between the
two foes in over 27 years — as “positive,” but the two
nations did not accomplish much.

Both Ryan Crocker, who headed
the U.S. delegation in the meetings, and Hassan Kazemi Qomi,
his Iranian counterpart, suggested in their separate press
conferences that no detailed exchanges took place, and that
no criticisms of the other were addressed. This should not
be surprising: the two sides, after all, came to the table
with diametrically opposed goals. One side wants to escalate
violence and further subvert the country, while the other
wants to reduce tension and stabilize the nation. One seeks
to establish a radical theocratic state modeled after its
own, and the other a secular Iraq.

The Iranian regime had three
objectives in attending these talks: winning the release of
the five commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards
(IRGC) arrested by American forces in January; the expulsion
from Iraq of Iran's main opposition group, known as the
Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, which is based 100 miles north of
Baghdad; and pushing for the full U.S. withdrawal from Iraq,
which is necessary for Iran's ultimate goal of establishing
global Islamic rule.

Iran believes that the 3,800
members of the MEK have played a significant role in
unifying the more moderate voices of Iraqi Shiites and
Sunnis against the Iranian influence in Iraq, and therefore
is the biggest obstacle to the Iranian regime's ambition of
establishing a sister Islamic republic in Iraq.

The MEK has also been
instrumental in exposing major nuclear sites of Iran as well
as its clandestine terror network in Iraq. The group is now
guarded by the United States military as "protected persons"
under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Administration officials
and military officers acknowledge that the MEK has been the
most helpful to the U.S. on Iran.

Going into the meeting, the
United States had one request: that Iran stop destabilizing
Iraq. Crocker stated that Tehran, which asserts that it
wants a stable Iraq, had to put a stop to the alleged
involvement of Iranians in arming and training Iraqi
insurgents. "Iranian actions on the ground have to come into
harmony with their described principles," he said. "Their
actions are at cross purposes to their stated policy. I laid
out to the Iranians direct, specific concerns about their
behavior in Iraq and their support for militias that are
fighting Iraqi and coalition forces."

Qomi told the Americans that the
training of the Iraqi army was proving to be "too slow" and
ineffective, and offered to train and equip Iraqi security
forces to create “a new military and security structure.”
The Iranian regime also proposed what it called a
“trilateral mechanism” in which the U.S., Iran, and Iraq
could coordinate security matters in Iraq.

Qomi offered a second round of
talks, but Crocker said the purpose of the meeting had been
to lay out U.S. concerns, and that had been achieved. "In
terms of what happens next, we are going to want to wait and
see — not what is said next, but what happens on the ground;
whether we start to see some indications of change of
Iranian behavior," he said. This formed the bulk of
America's demands of Iran, and for good reason.

According to my sources inside
Iran, the Explosively Formed Projectiles (EFP) used against
the Multi-National Force in Iraq are built in Iran on the
confidential order of the Qods Force — the same force the
five IRGC commanders captured by the U.S. are a part of —
which moves these deadly weapons to Iraq by its Iraqi agents
and distributes them among various terrorist proxies.

Iran has also set up command
headquarters for the Qods Force of the IRGC in Iran to
coordinate its terrorist activities in Iraq. Currently, Iran
has as many as 32,000 Iraqis on its payroll, including
senior officials in the Iraqi police, ministries, the
National Assembly, and other institutions.

Moreover, using a
well-coordinated network, Iran has been sending millions of
dollars into Iraq every month, both as cash and through wire
transfers.

In addition, the Qods Force has
allocated several bases in Tehran, Karaj, Qom, Isfahan, as
well as the provinces of Kermanshah, Ilam, Kurdistan, and
Khuzestan for the military training of Iraqi death squads
and terrorist networks. These individuals travel to Iran in
groups under various covers, using both legal and illegal
borders.

Since February 2006, Iraqi
militias have been trained in Qods Force camps in Iran
including the Imam Ali Garrison in northern Tehran. This
base has been IRGC's main location for training foreign
terrorists in Iran, but is now allocated entirely to the
training of Iraqi militias.

In short, despite Iran's
repeated proclamations that it wants a stable, secure Iraq,
its support for terrorism in Iraq has been bedrock of its
foreign policy. As Crocker put it after Monday's meeting,
“We all are pretty much in the same place in terms of
declaratory policy. The problem lies, in our view, with the
Iranians not bringing their behavior on the ground into line
with their own policy.”

Qomi's request for another
meeting between the two countries is a delay tactic. Just as
with the nuclear issue, the regime keeps talks alive in
order to buy time to further its own agenda, and Iraq is no
different. This is likely what was in Crocker's mind when he
said in response to Qomi's request that he'd wait to see
changes in Tehran's actions on the ground before continuing
talks.

For the Iranian regime to offer
training to the Iraqi Forces as well as to have a direct
hand in the security of Iraq is like the fox volunteering to
guard the chicken house. Instead of complying with Iranian
demands, the Unites States should insist on the need for
Iran to halt its terrorism in Iraq. For the mullahs in Iran,
every inch that the U.S. concedes is interpreted as a sign
of weakness that further emboldens the Iranian ruling
clerics, and invites more terrorism and sectarian violence.

Given its massive investment in
Iraq to date, the probability that Tehran will give up its
network in Iraq and decommission its Qods Force is next to
zero. Any concessions made by the U.S. would therefore only
serve to undermine its own agenda.

The problem in Iraq is neither a
civil nor a sectarian war. Iraq is now a battleground for
the clash of two alternatives: the Islamic extremist option,
which gets its orders from Tehran and seeks to establish an
Islamic republic in Iraq, and a democratic alternative
seeking a pluralistic democracy in the country.

Iraq will be secure and stable
when Iran's influence is cut off, its agents arrested,
militias disarmed and Tehran's proxies purged from the Iraqi
government. At the same time the coalition of secular and
nationalist Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds should be empowered.
To accomplish that, the Unites States should be ready to
take drastic measures regarding Iran.

War is not a viable option, but
pressuring the Iranian regime, disrupting Iran's operations
in Iraq and empowering the moderate voices in Iraq are all
practical and effective steps that can, and must, be taken.
Indeed many members of Congress from both sides of the
aisle, including presidential candidates, argue that the
U.S. can best exercise its leverage against Iran by removing
the Iranian opposition, the MEK from the list of Foreign
Terrorist Organizations (FTO). According to these members of
congress, the U.S. State Department included the MEK on the
FTO list a decade ago in an effort to placate the mullahs in
Tehran. In addition to allowing the MEK to use its full
resources to counter Tehran's agenda in Iraq, such a move
would send to the Iranian regime the unmistakable signal
that the U.S. is serious about halting Iran's terrorist
influence in Iraq and the rest of the region.

Jafarzadeh has revealed Iran's
terrorist network in Iraq and its terror training camps
since 2003. He first disclosed the existence of the Natanz
uranium enrichment facility and the Arak heavy water
facility in August 2002.

Prior to becoming a
contributor for FOX, and until August 2003, Jafarzadeh acted
for a dozen years as the chief congressional liaison and
media spokesman for the U.S. representative office of Iran's
parliament in exile, the National Council of Resistance of
Iran.

The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis by
Alireza Jafarzadeh